Annals of Aldamere

The Battle of Fort Smith

A battle? A skirmish? Or the opening engagement to something far worse?

The corpses of the Janette’s clones littered the grimy gantries and dirt covered entryway of the one time government facility. The lights flickered in the dust and debris floating through the air; the smell and taste of cordite mingled with the mélange of death. The banshees (for lack of better term) looked shrunken, nearly desiccated as if their efforts drained their very spirit.

Our heroes paused long enough to look at each other over the results of their skill and check on Janette Prime to see if she had any further injuries when a great bellow and crash could be herd from far below the facility. To a man they rushed forward to see what new evil awaited; past the rec room filled with books and tapes of the dead world, past a kitchen with a sandwich waiting for someone who will never eat it, past the cryogenic chamber where the rest of the science team were thawing into death, down into the main chamber of the weapons room.

There they found a disturbing sight; computers smashed, the rail gun disassembled, and the silo opened with a clear indication that some… thing had crawled its way out to the surface. Dwight lead the group in searching the ruins for the grimoire he knew must exist to no avail.

Dr. Armstrong joined them after a spell, and questioning her is how they discovered that the ‘computer’ that ran the facility was anything but your standard electronic gizmo. Instead it was some sort of biological neural construct thingamajig and more impotently, that piece of biological hardware was now missing.

To the surface they dashed, to see what doom awaited them. But no, there was no sign of whatever it was. Off went the Cricket and Khiron in search of who knows what which quickly revealed a giant amalgam of biology and machine trotting toward Potu. Khiron raced off to warn the village while the rest of the group and the good Doctor trotted down the path in pursuit.

The defenders of Potu were valiant, but well decided by the time the group arrived. Khiron helped a bit in the carnage, but he related to the rest that the battle was mostly over once ‘Nana’ became possessed or controlled by the entity and turned her magical furies on her relatives. Potu was deserted, with the controlled survivors riding in a sled behind the walking nightmare on their way to Fort Smith.

So the chase continued.

By the time the group reached Fort Smith, the town had already fallen. Many were killed, but a company of troops and artillery were able to evacuate and set up a line a couple miles to the east, blocking the growing army from heading deeper into the Protectorate setting up a stalemate.

The group found the commander of the Fort Smith blocking force, a lowly lieutenant. Apparently the Major who was in command of the garrison fell in the initial assault as well as the rest of his command staff.

Captain(!) Dwight was able to assume command based on his bonafides as a reservist, allowing for a combined attack against the Demon. The troops and artillery would commence a general assault on the town as our heroes engaged the entity with a combination of attacks, and EMP grenade, a magical Abatement assault, and a hoard of angry spirits commanded by Thorne.

The three pronged assault significantly weakened the Entity, allowing for the direct assault to come off. Khiron ran interference using his grenades and flying armor to assault from various directions, Dwight and Thorn split their arcane efforts between the Entity and Nana, while Olis and Marcel directly engaged the Entity.

In the end they were successful, with the creature destroyed (and perhaps even captured within Thorns walking trunk) and the remaining people of Potu and Fort Smith freed from the entities influence.

The only note of concern was that Khiron noted some sort of rocket which launched from the entity and exploded several hundred feet in the air when it fell, and no one knows that happened to Janette Armstrong.